Paintings of Nature’s Comeback Kids

A reader and acquaintance who is active in the environmental movement, Jonathan Rose, noted my post on Stephen Nash’s illustrations of imperiled wildlife and alerted me to the paintings of Isabella Kirkland. Ms. Kirkland, from Sausalito, Calif., has created a remarkable series of 3-by-4-foot canvases, called Taxa, on the history and future of biology.

The six paintings, each of which took about a year to create, memorialize species that have vanished from the planet during the ascent of humans; those that are finding new niches as humans spread plants and animals around the globe; those collected or harvested illegally or too aggressively; American species in decline; and — most hopefully — animals and plants that were thought to be extinct, or on the brink of vanishing, but have come back.

They are done in a style that might best be described as a mix of Dutch Master and “Where’s Waldo?” They are full of hidden things worth looking for.

I haven’t seen the paintings on a wall, but they are viewable in a fascinating interactive form at Ms. Kirkland’s Web site, www.isabellakirkland.com. Visitors can zoom into the canvases to look at individual species, with a detailed key alongside.

After focusing so much lately on endangered species, it was especially refreshing to study her painting called “Back” — a collection of animals and plants that were near extinction, or thought to be gone already, but that have reappeared or revived.

This work speaks of the astonishing resilience of Earth’s living veneer, which has come back repeatedly from the hardest possible knocks and flourished anew. I know of plenty of young people who worry that life itself is in peril from humanity’s growing global influence. This would be a great painting for them to explore.

Another painting worth visiting online is “Descendant,” which is also on the cover of “The Future of Life,” one of the recent books by the biologist Edward O. Wilson.

Dr. Wilson encouraged readers to explore that 1999 painting when his book was published in 2002, saying:

“If we are to be effective stewards of earth’s remaining life (the creation of religious conception) it will help to look at these and other species living on the edge in a more appreciative manner: not just as elements in a statistical ensemble but as unique entities worthy of detailed study. Each has a geologically long history, in many cases exceeding that of our own species, and each is biologically distinct, with its own place in the ecosystem to which it is — or at least was before humanity came along — exquisitely adapted. To search for the last members of a retreating species and learn more about it is an adventure. To protect it is a moral obligation, too long postponed.”

Is there other artwork of this sort out there? Perhaps we can build a virtual gallery of relevant links at Dot Earth. Send in your suggestions to dotearth@nytimes.com or post a comment.

I’d like to take up issue with the notion of “species that have vanished from the planet during the ascent of humans.” The Homo sapiens species has been around for 200,000 years. There are literally hundreds of millions of different species. On the whole, new species arise at a rate similar to that of “vanishing” species. Yes, humans are the only species on Earth that possesses the capability to effect the extinction of species through unnatural means like deforestation and habitat destruction.

But why should we mourn the loss of species that have not evolved the biological mechanism to survive? The biosphere exists in a dynamic and rapidly changing state that maintains an overall natural equilibrium. To deny the fact that species vanish naturally is to deny the basic premise of evolution and biological adaptation. Natural selection did not just happen in the past. It takes place in the present as well.

It is often more unnatural to intervene by trying to save a species. Panda bears may be cute, but on a meager diet of bamboo shoots, their preservation as a species is questionable. That does not, however, absolve us as humans from being responsible denizens of the Earth.

“Is there other artwork of this sort out there?” Happily, the answer is a resounding yes. In fact, next weekend (November 9-11) there’s going to be an entire symposium devoted to environmental art taking place in Boston at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Information about the symposium and about the work of the many artists who will be participating is available at
www dot groundingwork dot org

Sometimes all I can do is cry wondering what will happen to the myriad species destined for extinction on this planet. I can become paralyzed with grief. I am deeply grateful for the work of E.O. Wilson, Andrew Revkin,and the thousands upon thousands of official naturalists, citizen naturalists and scientists, and people who care deeply about the fate of this magnificent planet. I hope we hear and DO more about zero population growth. I wonder every day why we don’t scream more solutions for preventing further over population of the human species. Birth control for the human being should be mandated as point number one on every list of solutions designed to heal this planet. If each person could feel inspired, excited, moved and in awe of the biodiversity Earth boasts outside of the human being, perhaps the remaining non human species with whom we CO-exist might stand an inkling of a chance of surviving. Thank you for this long overdue discussion on over population of the human being and the need to revere the remaining millions of other species that define our global ecosystems.
Elizabeth Tjader

Speaking of species being hunted to extinction, see excellent story in Nov. 5 The New Yorker on Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a vigilante group seeking to protect all marine life. “Watson believes that humanity’s impulse to organize its surroundings, no matter how benign-seeming or elevating, is inherently destructive.”
Discussion of problems with Galapagos National Park, with Ecuadorean navy and police not doing good jobs — for instance, hundreds of thousands of sharks are killed within the reserve. Watson has called for “drastic but unspecified measures to reduce the world’s human population to under a billion.”

That is rediculous, SP. Animals should be able to co-exist with us, not be compltetely wiped-out because they depend on forests and trees. We depend on forests just as much as other animals do. I’d have to say it is definetly our fault for the decline of Panda’s, not theirs. I can imagine that in my lifetime that most of the forests of the world will be destroyed unless something is done. Because of that, I think it is safe to say that it is humans that should be concerned with their ability to “adapt”, and not panda’s and other wildlife. We are changing the chemistry of the earth for the worst.

Let me echo Mr. Corkey’s sentiments. Preserving the diversity is not a moral imperative; we should do it purely for our own long-term interests. Sharks are much more valuable to us than their fins. They’ve helped generations of fishermen but stabilizing marine ecosystems.

Currently I am working on a series called NOVA which shows about 150 species new to western science. As a big fan of Stephen Nash’s I am including one of the animals he has worked on Callithrix acariensis in this series. Marc van Roosmalen, the primatologist who discovered and published the scientific description of Callithrix acariensis, has found lots of other amazing “new” animals in the Amazon. (Google Marc to read about his plight in Brazil where he has been branded as an “eco-pirate” or “bio-spy”.)

If you would like to see other artists workiing in this vein, you might check out ART IN ACTION published by Earth Aware Editions sponsored by the Natural World Museum and UNEP.

Plainly, what is necessary now is intellectual honesty and courage as well as a willingness to begin “centering” the attention of the leaders of the human community on the threat to humanity, to life as we know it, to the environment and the integrity of Earth that is posed by the gigantic scale and evidently unsustainable growth rate of the human population worldwide.

Thanks for bringing attention to potential global threats to humanity, ones posed by the current huge scale and skyrocketing growth rate of human population numbers on Earth.

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By 2050 or so, the human population is expected to pass nine billion. Those billions will be seeking food, water and other resources on a planet where humans are already shaping climate and the web of life. Dot Earth was created by Andrew Revkin in October 2007 -- in part with support from a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship -- to explore ways to balance human needs and the planet's limits.